Less to pay out short-term, but potentially more to gain long-term. You own a business...what would you do to try to reclaim a once-frequent customer who had gone dormant? Say they had a couple hundred bucks' worth of credit on your books. Would you call them and try to win them back or just never tell them about the credit?

Personally, I'd like to thank all of you who can't keep track of your own frequent-flier accounts. You're subsidizing the system for the rest of us.

I'd like to thank Southwest for making it so danged hard to find your old awards...you know, behind that sneaky "What happened to my old credits and awards?" button on their home page. It's a conspiracy to prevent you from using your awards, and since I probably want to redeem on that same route, I'm happy about that.

Whatever you do, don't click that button!